MandrakeSoft reaches highest revenues ever, not breaking even yet

- by Tina Gasperson -
Parisian Linux distributor MandrakeSoft released its third fiscal quarter
revenue report on Wednesday, touting what it calls the "all-time highest"
revenues over any previous quarter.The report references "consolidated revenue" which, according to MandrakeSoft
CEO Jacques Le Marois, just means "revenue," but has "consolidated" attached to
it because the report concerns not just the company but all the
subsidiaries -- for example, the U.S. MandrakeSoft Inc. located in Altadena,
California.

MandrakeSoft expects the third quarter increases to cause a "significant
decrease" in operating losses. The company says it will release further third
quarter information in an upcoming announcement.

After a poor showing in the second quarter, with consolidated revenue down to
.97 million EUR, income shot up over the last several months, mostly because of OEM
deals, and MandrakeClub subscriptions, plus sales from the new
MandrakeStore -- revenue streams that MandrakeSoft says account for 35% of total third quarter income.

In addition to the recently announced deal with
Microtel, in which the Mandrake-Linux distribution is preloaded on Walmart.com
systems, MandrakeSoft has an OEM deal with HP/Compaq, in which Mandrake Linux is
a option on some of the desktop lines such as Vectra
and the e-PC.

The MandrakeStore sells a full line
of retail Mandrake products and third-party software, as well as OEM products
and support packages.